Survival
English for Travelers:

A
Basic EFL Course with lesson plans and activities - By Yoda Schmidt

Recently,
I was asked to teach a one week course to some EFL students at a
college near where I work. The course aim was to prepare the students
for going to New Zealand for 6 weeks as language exchange students.
I was told (and expected) that their level was going to be very
low: false beginners, but just barely. Some true beginners in the
mix for sure.

When
I walked into the class, I said a very casual, "How's
it going?"

Nothing.

"HOW
ARE YOU?"

A
look of relief on their faces as they replied, "Fine. And you?"
in the robotic fashion that they learned in middle school.

OK.
It was obvious. I had my work cut out for me. For me it would be
a challenge because I always teach false beginners -the real ones-
who have a lot of background knowledge and some listening ability,
even if their spoken ability is limited.

What
follows is a course outline complete with lesson plans and activities
for teaching some very basic functions that they may need immediately
on arrival in an English speaking country or even a country where
the level of English as a second language is quite high. There is
no particular order that must be followed, but I strongly recommend
using Chris's Classroom English Lesson first. Probably, that is
the single most important lesson they can learn. All lessons are
about one hour in length. All of the documents are in MS Word format
to allow for editing as teachers see fit:

This is actually
not my lesson plan. This lesson plan was written by Chris several
years ago. I always start beginner courses out with this one because
it gives the students the skills to get information when they don't
understand a speaker.